Richard-Gabriel Rummonds is recognized as one of the world’s pre-eminent handpress printers of the late twentieth century. For nearly twenty-five years, using the imprints of Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia, he printed and published illustrated limited editions of contemporary literature on iron handpresses, primarily in Verona, Italy and Cottondale, Alabama. Rummonds’ work has been exhibited in Rome, New York, and San Francisco. In 1999, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Biblioteca di via Senato in Milan, Italy. His books are held in museums, libraries and private collections worldwide.

Rummonds was appointed founding director of the MFA in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama in 1984. He has taught workshops around the world, including the University of Utah.

Fantasies & Hard Knocks, “embellished with over 450 images [most in color] and 65 recipes,” is a candid autobiography chronicling the printing and publishing of Rummonds’ pieces issued with Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia imprints.

In 1966, Rummonds founded Plain Wrapper Press in Quito, Ecuador, moving it to Verona, Italy in 1970, where he mastered his craft on nineteenth-century handpresses and established a worldwide reputation for excellent fine press productions. In 1982, Rummonds established Ex Ophidia in Cottondale, Alabama.

His memoir is filled with deeply personal anecdotes of working closely with many of the most acclaimed and renowned authors and artists of the time, including Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Burgess, Italo Calvino, C. F. Cavafy, John Cheever, Brendan Gill, Dana Gioia, Jack Spicer, Paul Zweig, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fulvio Testa, R. B. Kitaj and others.

My heart’s a scrapbook pasted by a child.
The lines run rampant and the colors wild
In pictures unrelated, and the words
Hop inconsistent like the tracks of birds.
And every other page holds empty space
Where time tore out the pictures of your face.

Luise Putcamp jr from Sonnets for Survivors, Kaleidograph Press, 1952
“Aftermath” published here with permission of the author

Culled from the pages of Harper’s Weekly, the most popular magazine of its day, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Great Rebellion illustrated the chronology of the Civil War and a brief history of the United States with an emphasis on the causes of the war. Most of the copy was taken directly from issues of the magazine as it covered the war. Harper’s sent both reporters and artists with the troops. Nearly one thousand original engravings kept recent past in memory: battle scenes, camps, marches, soldier life, portraits of officers, and maps. Artists such as Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer contributed to the magazine. Editors Alfred H. Guernsey and Henry M. Alden worked to compile and publish a definitive history of the war, using their own magazine as their main source, adding unpublished information as well. The Chicago edition was issued contemporaneously with the New York first edition, using the same sheets.

Time travel exists. On the fourth floor of the Marriott Library I have sat with the founding fathers as they pondered the questions facing the new nation on the heels of the American Revolution, been astounded at the invention of movable type in the revolution of the printing process, and solved mathematical principles with Euclid. While the famous people who turned the wheels of history are not miraculously hiding out on the U’s campus, the works they created are.

The rare books collection holds treasures from all corners of the globe that are available to anyone who wishes to uncover the magical milestones in history that helped to shape our present reality. A simple trip to the rare books will undoubtedly inspire and present questions that will lead to more trips back to the collection.

My freshman year at the U I took a class on the Reformation. The syllabus for the course dictated that on a certain day we would gather at the rare books collection at the library. At the time I didn’t know what to expect, and I certainly didn’t realize that this one time excursion out of the classroom and into the library would forever change my experience at the U and my understanding and passion for the study of history.

My class filed into the special collections classroom and were told to wipe our hands with baby wipes. As we cleaned our hands a large hardbound book was set before us. The book was obviously old and as the cover was opened to reveal the pages inside, it was clear it was not of this era. The thickness of the pages, paired with the indentation of the lettering on the page served as clues into a past that was far richer than any normal book in the shelves standing in the library below.

As I stared at the pages, completely enamored by their coloration, markings and engravings, the curator explained that the page sitting before us was an original leaflet of the Gutenberg Bible. Yes, that Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed after the invention of movable type. My heart started racing. I was standing in the same room, feet away from one of the most influential pieces of history in the world. This excitement I felt was multiplied when we were informed that we could come forward and hold it in our hands.

I think I partly expected to have to put on special gloves and admire the copy under glass. But as I moved up in the line, it became clear that I could hold the copy, no gloves, no glass, just me and the book. When the curator put the book in my hands, it was a feeling that I had never felt before. I can only explain it as a mixture of admiration, gratitude, and awe. For those brief moments that I held the leaflet of the Gutenberg Bible in my bare hands, the past and present collided. I was touching the same pages that came off the press nearly 550 years earlier.

I ran my hand over the page and could feel the indentations of the letters, and smell the old fibers of the paper. From this point on my experience at the U was forever changed. It wasn’t long after that trip to the rare books that I made the decision to declare my academic major in history. Every history class I took from that moment until my graduation I would find myself returning to the rare books.

Walking through the doors of the collection, for me, was like taking a step outside of the busy world we live in, to spend a few unadulterated moments with my historical friends. There have been times over the years that I have admittedly been moved to tears at the sight of certain books, and have felt completely unworthy to be in their presence. This happened recently during a project for my Worlds of Benjamin Franklin class.

As a requirement of the course we had to pick a book in the rare books to study and report on. After meeting with Luise Poulton, who was more than willing to sit down with me and explore options for the project, I decided upon the First Acts of the First Session of Congress of the United States. The cover of the book had completely separated from the spine of the book and the pages were old, some of them bent, with writing and notes filling the inside.

As I carefully turned the pages, I was overcome with the sense that I was holding a piece of America. This book is a first edition that was printed in 1790. As I researched the book, I discovered that this particular one was once the property of Nathaniel Rochester, a veteran of the Revolutionary War and the founder of Rochester, New York. As I began to unveil the history lurking behind the signatures on the inside cover I discovered that the book had also gone through the hands of veterans of the War of 1812 and the Civil War as well as influential legal minds in our country’s formative years. And finally, as I sat in the rare books reading room, I became the next person in the storied line of individuals who had the fortune of being part of this book’s history.

As a new graduate of the University of Utah’s History department I’ve spent recent days reflecting on my time at the U. During this reflection I have pondered on both the people that shaped my experiences as well as places that aided in the enrichment of educational pursuits. Although I have encountered multiple people and places that influenced the completion of my degree, I can say, without hesitation, that the rare books collection had the greatest impact on my desire to study history.

While my time in undergrad has come to an end, my relationship with the rare books collection is far from over. As I begin my legal studies at the U’s SJ Quinney College of Law this fall, I know I will find myself visiting a new set of historical friends. I’m confident the writings of John Locke have untold stories and lessons to teach me as I pursue my juris doctorate.

I have told Luise Poulton and Alison Conner, curators in the rare books department, on multiple occasions that I wish I could spend all day in the collection, going through the pages of history that the U has been charged with the immense responsibility of caring for. My wish for future generations of students at the U is that they have the opportunity, to visit the collection and experience the unparalleled feeling and emotion that accompany the opportunity to hold history in your hands. How lucky we are, as students past and present of the U, to have access to such a resource!

Articles of Peace Between the Most Serene and…
Great Britain. Treaties, etc., 1660-1685 (Charles II)
London: Printed by John Bill, Christopher Barker, Thomas Newcomb and Henry Hills, printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1677
First edition
E191 G78

For the signing of this treaty, the British government was represented by Rt. Hon. Herbert Jeffries, esq., lieutenant-governor of His Majesties colony of Virginia. Present were Sir John Berry and Francis Morison, esq., commissioners, and the Council of state of the colony. The treaty was signed, by marks, by the Queen of Pamunkey, the Queen of Waonoke, the King of the Nottoways, the King of the Nancymond Indians, and John West, son to the Queen of Pamunkey. University of Utah edition bound later by Riviere & son.

An article in the most recent issue of Analecta Papyrologica (XXVI 2014), published by Sicania University Press, Messina, Italy features four pieces of papyrus from the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Arabic Papyrus, Parchment and Paper collection. “Les archives d’un maquignon d’Égypte médiévale?” was written by Naïm Vanthieghem.

OF DIVORCE FOR ADULTERIE, AND MARRYING AGAINE…
Edmund Bunny (1540-1619)
Oxford: Printed for John Barnes, and are to be sold neere Holborne, 1613
Second edition
HQ813 B86 1613

This controversial treatise objected to the judgments of the reformed church that a man could lawfully divorce (“put away”) his wife for adultery, and marry another. Historically the position of the Roman Catholic Church had been that former spouses could not remarry during each other’s lifetimes. The Elizabethan and Stuart divines who advocated full divorce in cases where adultery was at issue believed a marriage contracted after a decree of separation should be validated.

Edmund Bunny voiced his opposition to the then-established permission of the Roman Catholic Church for remarriage. Of the controversy, he said that the practice of divorce and remarriage was not unusual and used an unnamed but apparently important family of the time who had done just that.

The three-page appendix contains the final words in a long-running controversy between Bunny and Robert Parsons (1546-1610), an English Jesuit priest. Parsons, author of The Christian Directorie, was incensed when Edmund Bunny published an expurgated or, by Roman Catholic thinking, pirated, Protestant edition in 1584. Parsons launched a vitriolic attack on the Protestant edition and its author, Bunny, denouncing what he called “this shameless shift of corrupting other men’s books.” An argument in print ensued, lasting through a 1589 revised version of Parson’s work by Bunny, a response by Parsons in 1607, an answer by Bunny in June 1610 in the appendix to the first edition of this book.

Bunny got the last word. Parsons died in April of the same year. Edmund Bunny’s father, Richard Bunny (fl. 1584) served Henry VIII and Edward VI and, as a Protestant, suffered under Queen Mary. Edmund was disinherited by his father when he announced his intention to enter the Roman Catholic Church.

Miscellaneous Poems
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
London: [By Simon Miller?], 1681 for Robert Boulter, at the Turks-Head in Cornhill
First edition

This collection marks the first appearance of the majority of Andrew Marvell’s poems, including “To His Coy Mistress,” one of the most celebrated lyric poems in the English language. The collection was “taken from exact copies, under his own handwriting, found since his death among his other papers, witness my hand this 15th day of October, 1680. Mary Marvell.” So states the “Letter to the Reader.” However, the edition was published under mysterious circumstances.

There is no record that Marvell ever married. Mary Palmer was Marvell’s housekeeper. It is thought that friends of Marvell’s added the erroneous announcement, for reasons still hypothesized today. Some modern-day Marvell scholars accept that Mary Palmer was married to Marvell.

Leaves S1 and X1 are cancels, replacing thirteen leaves, necessitated by the suppression of three long poems in honor of Oliver Cromwell, the publication of which was thought to be impolitic. The suppressed leaves are missing in all but two known copies of the printed folio, these two copies being incomplete. Popular rumor attributed Marvell’s death to poisoning by Jesuits.